State Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, will say in the next few days whether he will run against longtime U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, next year.

Urquhart, a Republican like Hatch, is currently the Utah House majority whip, a leadership position that puts him in line to run for speaker some day. But he would have to give up his Utah House seat to challenge Hatch in 2006.

Tuesday, Urquhart was talking like he was in the race.

"I don't see a downside" to challenging Hatch, Urquhart told KCPW radio. "It's good for the democratic process" to have longtime incumbents challenged within their own party.

If Urquhart does run against Hatch, who is 71, it would be the second election in a row in which Hatch has had a strong intra-party challenge. In 2000, conservative attorney Greg Hawkins got within several dozen convention delegate votes of getting into a party primary with Hatch.

Urquhart is not exactly like Hawkins, however. Urquhart is a Republican insider while Hawkins ran as a dissident, outside the party structure.

"We would just as soon not have (an intra-party) challenge," said longtime Republican campaign consultant Dave Hansen, who is managing Hatch's sixth U.S. Senate campaign next year. "Frankly, we'd rather not have any Democratic opposition, either."

XMission founder Pete Ashdown has already announced he's running as a Democratagainst Hatch.

"But we kind of expected both. We'll win in both arenas. We're ready for it," Hansen said Tuesday night.

According to Federal Election Commission reports filed last Friday, Hatch has $1.72 million in cash in his main campaign account — "the most he's ever had" a year out from election, said Hansen.

A GOP party leader, who asked that his name not be used, said last week that any GOP Hatch challenger has to knock off the well-known, well-financed Hatch in the May 2006 Republican State Convention.

Hatch "would win a primary" because he could flood his GOP opponent with ads on TV and radio, and with campaign organization, the leader said. And it is in state GOP conventions where some delegates have stood up to the longtime senator.

In the late 1990s, delegates actually passed a resolution opposing what became CHIP, the Hatch-sponsored child health care plan that provides federal dollars to states that insure low-income children.

Hatch walked to the convention stage to chide delegates for not being willing to help poor kids, citing scripture in his speech.

In 2000, Hatch was booed by some delegates and onlookers before his nominating convention speech but went on to get more than 60 percent of the delegate votes, eliminating Hawkins and winning his party's nomination outright.